The end of Israel

NAD-PLOAs Israel solidifies its military, political and economic control on historic Palestine, it is creating an apartheid state. The US should reassess its priorities.

The Palestinians should totally scrap the idea of a two state
solution. Even their UN bid for a non-member status, which
understandably is a tactical, not strategic objective, should be
withdrawn. A majority Palestinian populated state already exists in
historic Palestine. This conclusion is not the result of Palestinian
wishful thinking or baseless propaganda by Anti-Semites. But the Jewish minority population enjoys political and economic supremacy. A “democratic” apartheid aptly describes the official and public assessment of what Israel has become.

That historic (British Mandate) Palestine, the area between the
Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea has a Palestinian majority population
is the official finding of an Israeli government agency in the current
government of PM Netanyahu. For so long, pro Israeli pundits have
dismissed comparisons with South Africa’s apartheid regime where a
minority of Whites ruled over a majority of Blacks under a brutal racial
and inhumane regime. But now in an Israeli controlled territory, a
minority rules a majority. Of course it should be noted that the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
makes no mention of majority or minority rule, nor does it limit the
scope of the term apartheid to situations that closely resemble the
South African model.

A new economic report has revealed that there are now more
Palestinians than Jews in the territory under Israel's jurisdiction
between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan. Published in The
Marker, a Haaretz newspaper article says that the report virtually
portends official acknowledgement by the Netanyahu government that Jews
are a minority in historic Palestine.

Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar
wrote in a Haaretz article, "In other words, in the territory under
Israel's jurisdiction a situation of apartheid exists. A Jewish minority
rules over an Arab
majority." The report puts the official statistics at 5.9 million Jews
and 6.1 million Arabs. "In other words, between the Mediterranean Sea
and the Jordan River," remarked Eldar, "there is a pretty Jewish state
as far as its laws and customs, but the reality is not so democratic."

The new demographic reality in Israel is being noticed by the United States. Caroline Glick most recent column , writing in the Jerusalem Post contains
important demographic data. In his speech delivered May 2011, about
the Middle East, President Obama stated, “The number of Palestinians
living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally
reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian
territories. This will make it harder and harder – without a peace deal –
to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state.”

Glick adds, "It is unnecessary to dwell on what the {Israeli} prime
minister may expect if Obama remains in the White House for four more
years. But even if Mitt Romney spends the next four years there, Obama
will continue to hold full presidential authority until January 20,
2013."

"What damage would an outgoing President Obama do if the day after
the November 6th presidential election he instructs the US ambassador to
the United Nations to support Palestine's bid to join the
organization?" A campaigning Netanyahu will not have a problem turning
that into additional proof that the whole world is against Israel and so
the country really needs a strong leader, he concluded.

What is most striking is that the Israeli public’s growing acceptance of apartheid policies. A recent poll published in Haaretz
points to a sizable majority of Jews readily accepting discrimination
against Israeli Arab citizens and Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza. (See chart here.)
The survey indicates that a third to half of Jewish Israelis want to
live in a state that practices formal, open discrimination against its
Arab citizens. An even larger majority wants to live in an apartheid
state if Israel annexes the territories. The survey exposes anti-Arab,
ultra-nationalist views espoused by a majority of Israeli Jews. The
survey was commissioned by the Yisraela Goldblum Fund and is based on a
sample of 503 interviewees. A sweeping 74 percent majority is in favor
of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank.
Although the territories have not been annexed, most of the Jewish
public (58 percent) already believes Israel practices apartheid against
Arabs.

The figures of declining Jewish presence in historic Palestine, in
fact was also confirmed as far back as 2005 when the U.S. State
Department’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
for 2004 put the number of Jews at 5.3 million; the Arabs at 5.3
million. Curiously, the report failed to connect all the dots to arrive
at the explosive new demographic reality that an Israeli Jewish
minority now rules over a larger number of Palestinians living between
the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

The recent news will not please Israeli pundits who, for last few
years, have been arguing that the ‘demographic bomb’ was actually
favoring the Jewish not the Arab population. That in fact, Israel has
been witnessing higher Jewish birth rates than Arabs. According to the
American-Israel Demographic Research Group, “There is a demographic
problem, but it is not lethal, and the demographic trend is Jewish and
not Arab. The demographic momentum is shifting from the Arab to the
Jewish sector. Demography constitutes a strategic asset, not a
liability, for the Jewish State.” (AIDRG) Key Findings, April 2008

As the US continues to provide both moral and financial assistance,
questions about its complicity in maintaining an apartheid regime in
Israel will rise and eventually become part of our national discourse. I
hope that America’s moral compass will inevitably revert back to its
rightful place. Until then, my tax money that goes to aid Israeli
apartheid should be refunded. For Israel to survive as a Jewish state,
it must and immediately embark on polices that relegate the racist
doctrines it has accepted for itself and all of its citizens and those
it has authority over. Numbers may not be everything, but eventually
they will.

Dr. Aref Assaf just returned from a two week tour of the West Bank. His is president of the American Arab Forum, a think tank specializing in Arab and Muslim American affairs. www.aafusa.rog